


Dusty Plains

by superyuui



Category: TWIYEH, This is the Worst Idea You've Ever Had
Genre: Main Character Death, Multi, Post-Trauma, disabled people, illness that resembles lung cancer, mutated people, post-genocide, post-multiple main character death, universe: au, weird logic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-03
Updated: 2012-05-03
Packaged: 2017-11-04 18:30:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superyuui/pseuds/superyuui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where even sunlight is poisonous, Jeremy is just trying to survive. He didn't mean to fall in love.<br/>Influenced heavily by films such as The Book of Eli and 28 Days Later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dusty Plains

There were a lot of things that Jeremy didn’t know.

  
  
He didn’t know, for example, what a city was like. He had never seen a building taller than two storeys, not even for as far as he had walked (and part of him thought that old man Frank had been lying to him, or insane, or worse, when he had told Jeremy about them). He didn’t know what rain felt like on his face (too much radiation), nor did he know what morning birdsong sounded like (they hadn’t avoided the radiation), and, until the brigands had found their town, he had never known what it was like to hate another human being.  
  
Jeremy made up for the things he didn’t know by learning and understanding as much as he could. His own father was never present, so he had spent a lot of time with old man Frank in his ‘workshop’ during the summer days, when it was unsafe to be outside. Frank had taught him everything, and in exchange, Jeremy fetched the things that Frank needed so that he could build. Frank had even taught him to read - said that Jeremy was the only person that cared, and that if Frank was to live then he would at least pass on this one skill - and Jeremy honoured his memory by reading whenever he could, when it was safe to do so.  
  
Jeremy had been the first to find Frank after his body had seized up completely and stopped him from being able to move below the neck. He had no family of his own; he would have died if Jeremy didn’t take it upon himself to care for him.  
  
He had been the most vulnerable.  
  
Jeremy missed Frank more than anything.  
  
-  
  
Since then, Jeremy had been walking.  
  
He traveled at night, bundled up in a jacket that was once leather, trousers that flapped far too much in the wind and shoes that were nearly worn through. He had a scarf that he wrapped around his head when the dust storms became too strong, and he had socks that he used as gloves to stop sand getting into the cracks of his dry skin. He used Frank’s goggles to protect his eyes.  
  
Every two days, he marked his arm with a line of black grease - the way that he had been taught - and the grease dyed his skin. He didn’t know how many lines there were, as ten was the only number that he could count to, but the lines nearly covered his left forearm.  
  
Jeremy had had to get used to a lot of things very quickly since leaving what was left of his home. Hunger that pulled the insides of his stomach, thirst that reduced his lips and mouth to paper, sand that still managed to cake in the backs of his knees and insides of his elbows through his clothes. They were all travelling companions to him now.  
  
He had a fairly large canteen of water -  _clean_  water - he kept at the bottom of his small rucksack, both of which he had been lucky enough to find a day or so after leaving. They had been inside a car which had been half buried in the sand, the windows long gone and the paint eroded off. (He had had to pick through some skeletons to get to it, but there was enough room in the bag next to the tin canteen in which to stuff  _The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark_ , the only thing he had brought with him apart from Frank’s goggles.)  
  
The remaining water was low, and he thought he could even hear it sloshing around inside the container when he had to jump down or over something, but it was probably just because it was heavy on his mind. He knew he wouldn’t last very long after the water ran out, but at least fighting the urge to drink all that was left was something to occupy his mind. The desolate, barren landscape had never really captured his attention for very long.  
  
Jeremy squinted up at the sky and swore to himself, backtracking quickly. The inky black night had begun to recede to a deep blue; he had to get underground. He had climbed up a small overhang made by the roots of a dead tree just a mile previously, and at this point, it would do.  
  
He made it back with enough time to dig into the overhang with his chapped hands - the earth was dry so he only really had difficulty where the roots had tangled themselves - and make a hole big enough to protect himself from the harmful sunlight.  
  
By now, his thirst was demanding, and a sharp pain had begun to gather in his forehead from going so long without anything to drink. He peeled the socks from his hands gingerly - they were sticking to his knuckles, which were bleeding - and balled them up in his pocket. Awkwardly, for there was not a lot of space, he pulled his bag up into his lap and pulled the canteen out, licking his split lips reflexively despite how much it made them sting. He shook the canteen to gauge the remaining water level and grimaced before taking the largest sip that he dared, holding the water in his mouth and swallowing as slowly as possible.  
  
He breathed slowly, through his nose, and tried to both savour and ignore the relief the water gave him. If he got too caught up in it, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from drinking all that was left, and he hadn’t come across any underground springs in a while. He’d have to actively look tomorrow, dangerous as it was.  
  
Safe springs, naturally, always meant people.  
  
Jeremy unfolded the scarf, loosely covered his nose and mouth with it and then tied it behind his head, in case there was a sand storm during the day. He ached to rub the sweat and grit out of his eyes but he had nothing clean, not even a patch of skin, to do it with. Instead, he left the goggles where they were, no matter how much he was convinced that his skin would grow over them some day and fuse them to his face.  
  
Carefully, even more so than he had been with his scraped knuckles, he pulled  _The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark_  out of his bag. The colour had worn off of the cover and the pages were getting loose and he knew the words off by heart, but he read it every morning before the sun got too strong.  
  
—  
  
Jeremy jerked awake, sucking in a lungful of dust. He coughed on it, and had a moment of panic where he thought he would suffocate before he caught his breath again. His lips stung sharply - they had split back open - but he still felt far better than he had before falling asleep.  
  
He shielded his eyes and turned around to see through the opening over the overhang. It was still light outside, but he seemed to have woken with the onset of dusk, and wouldn’t have to wait much longer.  
  
He shuffled around and hissed in pain as he stretched his legs out. His knees were sore from sleeping curled up the way he had, and his muscles weren’t faring much better. He put the socks on his hands again and massaged his calves, stretching his toes inside his shoes. He’d give anything for a bath - even an open pond would do at this point - but he hadn’t had the opportunity for more than a week or two.  
  
Night fell properly, and Jeremy shuffled out of the tunnel, tucking the scarf back into his bag. He climbed up out of the shallow ditch and carried on in the direction he had the night before, alert. There was an area in the distance that he had been trying to avoid, for he had caught a glimpse of it in the light a few days previously and it had been  _green_ , and green was good because green meant water but green was also bad because water meant people. Jeremy was a fast runner but there was always the chance that someone else would be faster, and you couldn’t always just trust a stranger on the basis that their hands weren’t shaking from cannibalism.  
  
Despite all this, however, there was no denying that he needed water desperately; he had no choice but to try his luck.  
  
Anyway, he reasoned that he would rather get attacked and die quickly than die slowly from dehydration.  
  
-  
  
He saw them before they saw him.  
  
A man and a woman - not much older than he was, judging by their voices - were sitting over a campfire, waiting for the meat of some animal to cook, chatting carelessly. Jeremy could have easily clubbed them with a large branch, or stabbed them with his broken knife, and keep all the meat for himself. For some reason, despite the anger that still writhed within him at the memory of his people and the monsters he had lost them to, he had no desire to harm this couple.  
  
Of course, that didn’t mean they felt the same way.  
  
He supposed he was surprised, both by them and by the fact that he could understand the things they were saying. He had not come across anyone since the mutant girl in the library, which had been months ago, and she didn’t even speak a single word to him while he had been there, so Jeremy had assumed that wherever other people came from used different words to the words he used.  
  
Jeremy understood these people as if they had come from the same village he had. He hung back, hiding behind rubble, and listened to them speak.  
  
He wondered how long they had known each other.  
  
He wondered if they were in love.  
  
-  
  
 _She was a mutant.  
  
He had heard stories of them of course; women who had too much sunlight when pregnant could give birth to mutant babies, and the ways they mutated were different every time.  
  
This girl had very large ears and her fingers were fused all the way down to the first knuckle. A useless, hollow tube of skin was wrapped around her leg to keep it out of the way; probably another limb that had only begun to form just before her birth.  
  
She didn’t speak, but she hadn’t attacked him, and her ears swiveled to face sounds when they were made, so she wasn’t deaf. At first Jeremy thought she was glaring at him, but he soon realised that she had trouble seeing and was pinching her eyes together to help focus on far-away things.  
  
She didn’t seem too bad, and it was raining anyway.  
  
It wasn’t like he could leave the library.  
  
He had sat with her through the night, and then the day, and even though he didn’t know if she could understand him, he had read _The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark _aloud to her, and she had listened to him speak even though his voice croaked and cracked and stumbled over some syllables. He had even been comfortable enough to sleep on the floor, and even though his back hurt when he woke in the evening, it was the best day’s sleep he had had in a long time.  
  
Jeremy grew fond of the mutant girl, and he read a few more books to her in the time he was there. He didn’t know how long it was; he forgot to mark his arm, and he was safer here than he had been as a traveler. He really did care about the girl - more than he had cared for anyone since Frank was killed - and it was nice to have a friend, even if she didn’t speak.  
  
One morning, he kissed her.  
_  
  
-  
  
Jeremy rested his cheek against a smooth plane of rock, fighting tiredness. He was weak, and though he only travelled at night, something deep in the part of him that made him human was reminding him that he should be resting when the sun was down.  
  
At least winter was approaching. He would be able to move easier at dusk and dawn than he could have ever done at summer - when he spent nearly all day holed up underground - and safe ice would start to form in the shadows that he could melt and drink. Meat, however, would be even harder to come by. He had only survived as long as he had by not discriminating; he ate whatever animal he could find, whether it was ugly, whether it stank, whether it attacked him.  
  
That still did not mean he came by them often, though.  
  
Even now, in the middle of Fall, it had been weeks since Jeremy had had anything larger than a rodent.The smell of the meat cooking on the strange couple’s fire was making his mouth fill with saliva and his stomach stir.  
  
He poked his head around the side of the rock to check on them. Their talking had slowed, and Jeremy had been worried that they had heard his belly grumbling and were going to attack. He quickly saw that they were just busy eating some of the cooked meat - nothing had ever looked so delicious to him, regardless of whatever the animal had been - and his stomach growled again.  
  
The male nudged the female with his elbow and she nodded. Jeremy darted back behind the rock, holding his breath. He became painfully aware of the fact that they were downwind, and he hoped the smoke from the fire and the meat would hide his smell.  
  
Minutes passed and nothing happened.  
  
Jeremy’s palms and fingers became clammy with sweat and he could even feel it gathering on his neck and face.  
  
When enough time had passed, he risked another look.  
  
The woman was stamping on the fire to put it out, and the man was packing the remaining meat into a satchel.  
  
They were leaving.  
  
More importantly,  _they were leaving some of the meat behind_.  
  
They set off through the trees in the opposite direction. Jeremy waited for as long as he could bear it, listening for anything that could give them away if they had decided to attack him, but the small patch of trees beyond him was silent.  
  
He pushed the googles up onto his forehead and swallowed carefully, heart hammering in his chest, legs beginning to shake with pent up adrenaline.  
  
Suddenly, Jeremy darted forward, snatched up the hot meat in his hands and sprinted back to where he had come from. He got so far away before he remembered his initial reason for going toward the greenery - water - and cursed. He hid behind the big rock again and bit carefully into the slice of meat.  
  
It was hot and greasy and a bit chewy but  _he had never tasted anything so delicious in his life_  and he sighed with the pleasure of real meat on his tongue, closing his eyes for a moment to properly savour the treat.  
  
He swallowed a bit thickly, his throat dry, and bit into it again. This time, he looked around carefully for anything that could suggest a water source, or even a plant with a thick stem that he could drink from without being poisoned.  
  
Nothing looked particularly promising.  
  
Jeremy rubbed some of the grease on his lips to help soothe them before folding the small steak away in his bag. He would wait and see if the few bites he had taken went down properly before eating more of it. If it was bad then he hopefully wouldn’t get too sick, and if it was good, well, the longer he could make it last for; the better. He took a tiny swig of water and started to weave through the trees, eyes peeled for anything that could help him.  
  
He didn’t find any water, and his insides twisted at how uncomfortable that notion made him, but he did find a nice abandoned fox’s den (maybe it hadn’t been abandoned before the strange couple happened to pass by) to hide in for the night. It even had enough room for him to stretch his legs out a little bit.  
  
Jeremy covered up the entrance with fallen branches from the weird arrowhead-shaped trees nearby - the leaves of which were tiny and pointed and carpeted the floor of the copse and were somewhat useless as a means of cover - and swallowed a bit more water before settling down, using his bag as a pillow.  
  
It wasn’t light enough to read  _The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark_.  
  
——-  
  
Jeremy ate a good chunk of the meat the next evening when he woke up to a perfectly settled stomach. And, nerve-wrackingly, the last of his water. His lips had healed a lot better after the coating of grease, and he licked them carefully and found they didn’t sting anymore. They’d split right up again as soon as he hit a sandstorm, but right now he felt very content. All he needed was a refill of water, and he was sure there’d be one nearby.  
  
Trees didn’t grow out of nothing.  
  
Jeremy crawled carefully out of the den, eyes and ears alert. There was a breeze today and it would definitely be kicking up dust and sand down on the flatlands. He regretfully pulled his goggles back on and emerged completely when he had deemed it safe to do so. It was still sort of light outside but he was protected by the shade of the trees and he could move around easily.  
  
He crouched down near the base of a sapling and scooped some of the needle-like leaves out of the way to reveal the ground beneath it, as dry and as cracked as his own skin. He took out his knife - it was rusty and the tip had come off before he had found it - and dug the earth away as best he could. He couldn’t dig with his hands; his nails were still torn and a bit bloody from burrowing into the overhang the night before.  
  
Soon enough, he got deep enough down that he could feel the earth begin to moisten. His heart pulsed excitedly, and he probably would have forced his whole head into the gap he had dug and sucked the water from the dirt if he could. Instead, he cut a notch into one of the tree’s thicker roots and held his canteen beneath it to let it catch the water that sluggishly trickled out.  
  
The sound of a twig snapping jerked him to attention, and he covered the canteen and tree root with his scarf before haphazardly burying them both to hide his precious water source. Without thinking, he scrambled up the trunk of the nearest fully-grown tree and managed to get to cover just before two figures appeared below him. He stuffed his grimy, dirt-covered fist in his mouth to stop himself from making a sound.  
  
Though they were covered up more that evening, Jeremy could tell that it was the two people from the previous night, and his mind reeled with the implications.  
  
Did they know he was here?  
  
Were they toying with him?  
  
 _Was the meat poisoned after all?_  
  
They just seemed to be passing through, though, and his hope increased the further away they got. They were talking in hushed voices, more carefully than they had been the night before, so Jeremy became certain that they at least knew they were not alone.   
  
The couple went and settled around same fire pit they had the night previously. They slung a dead animal down on the carpet of needle-leaves and started to skin it. Jeremy would have to wait until they started a fire before he could climb down safely.  
  
It didn’t look like they were going to do that anytime soon, however.  
  
Jeremy’s legs ached sharply and the bark of the flimsy tree was digging into his palms. He shifted and his knee twinged painfully. A lot of time passed - more than he could count, by far - and he began to grow anxious about the approaching dawn.  
  
Mercifully, orange light spread out from the couple and the smell of woodsmoke began to tease Jeremy’s nostrils. The pair of strangers started to talk louder to be heard over the sound of the fire. Jeremy stretched his legs out and let the blood flow round them before he shimmied back down to the ground. Quietly as he could, he dug his canteen and scarf back up. The scarf was damp where the canteen had overflowed and Jeremy took a tiny sip of water. It was bitter on his tongue but it was  _safe_  and it was  _so good_. He took another gulp, probably more than he should have, but the relief - mentally and physically - was almost too much to fight.  
  
He folded both the canteen and the scarf back into his bag and stowed it in the hole, careful to put it somewhere it wouldn’t get damp. He didn’t re-bury it; the long shadows that the fire cast hid it from sight.  
  
Jeremy pulled his knife out and held it in front of himself. Slowly, he edged closer to the people, shaking with adrenaline, sickness nestled low in his stomach.  
  
He was going to do it.  
  
He would kill them.  
  
He would-  
  
“Hey, you came down!”  
  
Jeremy’s heart stopped. One of them - the woman - turned around and pulled her protective mask off.  
  
She smiled at him.  
  
“We got too much meat again; you want some?”  
  
Jeremy stared at her, suspicious. The woman smiled a little wider and beckoned him over before  _turning her back on him again._  
  
Now, Jeremy gaped openly. He could kill them easily and they weren’t going to do anything about it! Were they suicidal or something?!  
  
“Come on, kid. It’ll go bad if you don’t cook it soon.” the man said, not even turning to look at him.  
  
“How do I know you haven’t poisoned it?” Jeremy croaked, his voice dry and parched.  
  
“You don’t,” he shrugged nonchalantly, “but you could always starve instead.” At this, the woman gave the man a shove, berating him.  
  
“Be nice.” she sighed quietly (enough that if Jeremy’s hearing wasn’t as good as it was then he wouldn’t have heard her), as if she often found herself apologising for him.  
  
In the end, Jeremy didn’t know what it was that made him sit down with them.  
  
Maybe it was the hunger, maybe it was the company of people, or maybe it was the knowledge that he could probably take them if he had to.  
  
Jeremy sawed a slab of meat from the animal’s breast and balanced it on one of the metal spires over the fire, nearly catching his hands in the process.  
  
“What’s your name, kid?” the woman asked through a mouthful.  
  
Jeremy watched her carefully but didn’t answer. If he got close to them and they decided to kill him after all, it would be harder to defend himself.  
  
“‘M Nicole,” she carried on, unfazed by his hostility, “Captain Happiness over here is Ian,”  
  
“Hi,” Jeremy replied in monotone. He turned his portion over carefully.  
  
Nicole laughed once, “kid if we were gonna kill you we’d’ve done it already.”  
  
This didn’t lighten his mood any more, but he figured they  _were_  being nice enough to feed him.  
  
“Right,” he said, croaking still. He cleared his throat and swallowed before adding, “I’m called Jeremy.”  
  
“Where’re ya headed, Jer?”  
  
“Jeremy,” he corrected, “East.”  
  
“Hmm. How come?”  
  
Jeremy mulled over this for a second. The small clearing was once again silent apart from the crackling of the fire and the sound of a light breeze overhead.  
  
“Nothing else to do, I guess.” He answered finally, quietly. Nicole glanced at Ian and they seemed to have a wordless conversation - something that Jeremy had only ever seen once before - and Nicole finally stopped asking questions. She was nice, but Jeremy just felt uncomfortable.  
  
They ate in silence from then, but Jeremy didn’t let himself relax. When he had finished, he stood wordlessly and headed for the tree line.  
  
“You should come with us,” Ian said before he got too far away, “Pine tree water isn’t good for you and you’ll get sick off of it. We have clean water and too much food for the three of us.”  
  
’ _Three?_ ’ Jeremy thought, before the rest of the proposal registered in his mind.  
  
“Why?” he asked, genuinely surprised. People - at least, the people that Jeremy had met - tended to hoard things for themselves, survive as long as  _they_  could. Why would they want to share with him; a strange kid they didn’t even know?  
  
“Nothing else to do, right?” Ian quipped, almost humourlessly.  
  
Every cell in Jeremy’s brain was telling him that this was a trap. That this couple were cannibals, and only had steady hands because they were new to it.  
  
The comment about the water was stuck in his mind, though.  
  
Maybe the water he had drunk  _was_  bad.  
  
He did feel a bit queasy.  
  
…  
  
If they did have clean water, it would definitely be worth going with them. They couldn’t live too far away if they came to the copse every night.  
  
Jeremy went and retrieved his bag, Ian’s offer heavy on his mind.  
  
He shook his head.  
  
Water wasn’t worth putting himself in such a vulnerable position. He had left the girl in the library; he could leave Nicole and Ian.  
  
Jeremy climbed up another tree and waited for them to leave before crawling back into the fox’s den. It was getting too light to risk moving on now; he would have to do it tomorrow.  
  
He forced down some more of the bitter water - though he was sure now that it was making him feel nauseous - and chewed on some more meat before he settled down to sleep,  _The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark_  wrapped in his arms.  
  
-  
  
Jeremy woke in the day, and barely had enough time to cover his head with his scarf before he had to crawl outside and vomit.  
  
When this happened for the third time, he finally admitted to himself that he was in trouble.  
  
-  
  
“Kid, wake up,”  
  
Jeremy’s mouth felt fuzzy, like someone had stuffed a sock into it.  
  
His head was pounding with a sharp pain.  
  
“Jeremy,”  
  
His eyes fluttered open and at first he saw nothing in the darkness. He closed them again and tried to fight against the hands that were on him.  
  
He heard words being said but he couldn’t process them; his mind wouldn’t work. He felt heavy and weak but more than that he felt tired.  
  
“Don’t be an asshole, kid; you have to drink this  _right now_.”  
  
He opened his eyes again and saw colours - red and flesh and green - and then something against his lips, a cold, thin liquid. He drank the fresh water greedily and leaned up for more when it wasn’t being given to him quick enough, only to be restrained by the person helping him.  
  
“You should’ve come with us, Jer,” a woman sighed tiredly.  
  
Nicole.  
  
Nicole was helping him.  
  
“Jeremy,” he slurred, correcting her reflexively. She laughed softly and stroked his hair away from where it was sticking to his forehead with sweat.  
  
“Ugh,” she grimaced, “you need a bath,”  
  
“You get me the water and I’ll have one,” he replied tiredly. His brain was still fuzzed from the bad day he had had, but the water Nicole had fed him was surprisingly refreshing. It had been a long time since he had tasted anything as clean as it was.  
  
He closed his eyes again and sighed, relaxing under her touch.  
  
When he woke next, it was dawn, and he was back inside the fox’s den. Ian was next to him, arms folded. Jeremy felt a lot more conscious, and he blinked, looking around. His bag was where he had left it, and his jacket was folded under his head. He sat up carefully, still a bit woozy.  
  
Ian shook Jeremy’s canteen in front of his eyes.  
  
“Nicole refilled it with our water. It’s okay for you to drink now. Stay away from pine water if you can.”  
  
Jeremy nodded and took a mouthful. His arms were quivering with weakness, but a knot of tension had loosened in his stomach.  
  
“Come with us,” Ian said after a good while of silence.  
  
Jeremy eyed him carefully.  
  
“Or do whatever; I’m not asking you to come for your sake,” Ian grumbled, folding his arms again, “Nicole was worried about you yesterday and nearly didn’t sleep.”  
  
At that, something shifted inside Jeremy. He realised that he trusted both of them now, more than he had wanted to. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to stay with them for a few days. Maybe just until he got his strength back and learned more about the plants they had here; they were different than the ones where he had grown up, and he wanted to avoid getting sick again.  
  
“Okay,” he sighed, nodding once, “I’ll come with you. But I ain’t staying long.”  
  
“Whatever.”  
  
———  
  
After having some meat and nearly half the water left in the canteen, Jeremy slept for the rest of the day. He woke to a light nudge on the shoulder.  
  
“Come on, kid, or the sun’ll be up before we get back.”  
  
Jeremy dragged himself out of the den, aching after so long asleep, found somewhere private to relieve himself and rejoined Ian at the blackened patch of earth where they usually lit their fires.  
  
The walk was uneventful and took them higher up the mountain. Visibility was low and Jeremy nearly twisted his ankles on repeated occasions, but Ian was moving about as easily as if he was born around there.  
  
Heck, maybe he  _had_  been born around there. People didn’t usually survive long when they were wanderers. Jeremy had only survived this long out of pure spite for himself. He knew that he would have died the day before if Nicole and Ian hadn’t gone to look for him again.  
  
A wash of gratefulness flooded within his chest which he immediately quashed. It wouldn’t do good for him to get too attached. He liked them, that was sure enough. Liked them enough to trust them not to kill him in his sleep, at least.  
  
Ian stopped and gestured. Jeremy squinted and saw a dark opening, about as high as his mid-thigh.  
  
“You’re gonna have to crawl through,” Ian supplied, and Jeremy gave him a look. Ian rolled his eyes in exasperation and doubled over, disappearing into the entrance.  
  
Jeremy scratched behind his ear and followed suit. The entrance was actually a tunnel that stretched further than his knees were particularly comfortable with and sloped slightly upward in places. It was pitch black and the sounds of the two men crawling reverberated very close to his ears, and his heart raced if he thought too much about it.  
  
Without the sky to look at, Jeremy lost track of time. Every now and then the tunnel widened and they paused, groping around blindly in their rucksacks for some water. Eventually, the tunnel widened out into a cave that was flooded with green-blue light and Jeremy gaped as he took it in. The ceiling was dotted with tiny bunches of fuzz that somehow glowed on their own, and Jeremy was so taken in by them that he didn’t notice the other important feature of the cave.  
  
There was a large pool off to one side and the sound of trickling. This must be where their fresh water came from.  
  
“Woah,” he breathed, despite himself, “how did you find a place like this?”  
  
Ian smirked - he looked a little eerie in the green light - and didn’t answer. Jeremy spotted movement on the other side of the cave and automatically turned toward it.  
  
“Jeremy!” Nicole exclaimed, her voice echoing in the space, “you came!”  
  
“Yeah,” he felt himself smile at her in response. He could see her a lot clearer in here than he had outside. Her hair was long and red and tucked behind her ears, which were pointed - mutated. She was sort of cute, he realised, now that he wasn’t waiting to be attacked. He felt heat rise in his cheeks and he looked toward a third person who was sat - almost propped up - on Nicole’s other side, a curious expression on his face.  
  
At first, Jeremy thought that he was a mutant too, before he remembered that large noses were actually more likely to be due to genetics.  
  
“Jordi, this is Jeremy. Jeremy, Jordi.”  
  
Jeremy waved a little awkwardly and Jordi nodded in greeting but didn’t quite meet his eyes. The silence was broken by Jeremy’s insistent stomach, the growl echoing around the cavern. They sat down to an awkward but civilised dinner, Jeremy piecing things together as he went.  
  
There were several caves that split off from the one they were in that they used as rooms, Nicole had explained, and they separated them with panels they used as doors, which were made of woven branches and lined with fur on the inside. Jeremy was impressed with how elaborate it was.  
  
The small area in which they were eating was centred by a small pile of rocks which were glowing orange, and gave off almost as much heat as a roaring fire. Oddly, Nicole had her feet buried in them past the ankle. When Jeremy tried to touch one of them, Ian had grabbed his hand and warned him against it.  
  
Nicole, it turned out, could create fire.  
  
Jeremy wasn’t sure how he felt about that.  
  
Jordi kept having to clear his throat, even though he hadn’t been talking, and Jeremy found that his attention kept returning to the new man. Something wasn’t quite right with the way he moved or spoke. Whenever Nicole passed him anything, she pressed it right into his hands rather than let him pick it up himself, which Jeremy thought was strange.  
  
It took until after the meal, when Jordi had doubled over coughing and needed to be helped back to his ‘room’ to rest, for Jeremy to realise that he was sick.  
  
“What’s wrong with him?” he asked in a quiet voice after Ian had helped Jordi out.  
  
Nicole swallowed her mouthful and whispered back “We don’t really know. We’ve known him for maybe two or three years and he’s always been sort of sick,” she shrugged then, “he was born not long after the Collapse; maybe he breathed in too much dust.”  
  
Jeremy nodded, thoughtful. When he had finished eating, Nicole showed him where he could take a bath.  
  
It wasn’t much; it was simply a small room with a pothole filled with water that was kept separate to the water they drank from. Nicole warned him that the water would be chilly, but he found that that didn’t even bother him. When he was alone and the ‘door’ was firmly in place, Jeremy stripped excitedly and practically dove in. It was absolutely freezing and made his balls withdraw up into his stomach but he almost didn’t notice it, as he was busy scrubbing his skin clean.  
  
The feeling of shedding all of the grime and sweat and blood that had caked his body for weeks was indescribably pleasant. For the first time in a long time, Jeremy felt safe and clean and had a stomach full of food, and the promise of a warm soft bed to sleep in.  
  
It was getting harder to want to leave.  
  
-  
  
Jeremy wasn’t sure how long he had slept for, wrapped up in his bed of soft animal pelts with nothing but the sound of his own breathing, but when he awoke he was so well-rested that he felt like he had slept for weeks.  
  
He stretched languorously, his feet slipping into cold air as he extended them out of the cover of the furs, and relished the feeling of not having to move on and worry about where he would sleep that morning or what he would eat or where he would get water from.  
  
He could hardly remember ever feeling so content.  
  
Eventually, Jeremy forced himself out of the comfy bed and got dressed. Nicole had given him some clothes - cleaner than his had been - to wear for the time being, and his skin felt so soft and clean that he had to quickly run his hands up and down his own arms to memorise how it felt. He shivered pleasantly and pushed the screen back, heading into the main cavern. Jordi was sat around the hot rocks again, weaving something with his fingers.  
  
“You are awake,” he commented softly, his voice rasping and making the language sound strange.  
  
Jeremy nodded, “Yeah. Was I out a long time?”  
  
Jordi shrugged, “I ‘ave difficulty telling the time,” he explained a little meekly, but it made sense to Jeremy. Jordi was probably too sick to leave the cave - he got tired and out of breath from walking a few paces on his own, let alone getting outside at night.  
  
Jeremy looked around. He wasn’t sure what to do with himself.  
  
“Whatcha doing?” he asked finally, sitting by the hot stones. Jordi started to reply but began to cough again, thankfully less than he had the morning before.  
  
“Sorry,” he apologised quietly. Jeremy shook his head.  
  
“It’s fine, man. You can’t help it. You shoulda heard old man Frank coughing; it was like pebbles in a can.”  
  
Jordi chuckled at this, and Jeremy felt his chest swell. There was something about the sick man that was just so…  _sad_. Jeremy quickly found that it made him feel better to make Jordi feel happy.  
  
“I like to be helpful,” Jordi explained, answering Jeremy’s original question and holding up the square of weaving he was working on, “Ian and Nicole look after me, so I do what I can to help them.”  
  
Jeremy let his thoughts mull in his head before he cleared his throat.  
  
“Are they, uh… like…”  
  
“A couple?” Jordi supplied, “Non, but they like each other. Even  _I_  can see that.”  
  
Jordi sounded bitter, all of a sudden, but Jeremy found that he understood. He knew what it was like to be alone. If he was in a group of people and still managed to be lonely, he knew that it would make him sad too.  
  
There was still…  _something_.  
  
Jeremy studied Jordi while he worked. He was dexterous, and the plate he was making was impressive considering the fact that it was made of branches, but he spent the entire time staring almost blankly into the hot rocks.  
  
His eyes, Jeremy noticed, were pale, and barely moved. Now that he thought about it, Jordi had not looked him in the eye even once.  
  
Jeremy felt like he had been flung into a lake of ice.  
  
It suddenly all made sense.  
  
Jordi was…  
  
” _You’re blind,_ ” Jeremy breathed. It explained everything. It was why he didn’t turn his head unless he heard something, it was why things had to be placed into his hands, it was why he felt entire surfaces of things with his fingers as if he was mapping them.  
  
Jordi smiled a little bit, but the sadness was back, “You’re clever,” he replied.  
  
Jeremy felt heat in his ears and he smiled despite himself. They sat comfortably, the silence punctuated by the shuffling scratching noises of Jordi’s weaving.  
  
“So like…” Jeremy started, idly picking at a scab on his knuckle, “Do you talk funny ‘cus you’re sick or ‘cus you’re blind?”  
  
Jordi snorted, “English isn’t my first language,”  
  
Jeremy stared at him. “I have no idea what you just said,” he confessed quietly, looking down out of embarrassment. He didn’t like things he didn’t know. “I only know the words that I was born with.”  
  
“Oh, uh…” Jordi frowned and paused what he was doing, resting his hands in his lap, “A language is uh… the name of the,” he scratched behind his ear, “Sort of the name of the kinds of words you use to say things. Right now, the language we’re speaking is English,”  
  
“I never knew that…” Jeremy mumbled, “So how come you didn’t speak English first but you can speak it now?”  
  
Jeremy regretted asking that as soon as he saw Jordi’s expression change. The sadness was back again.  
  
Jordi didn’t answer him. He grew tired quickly, Jeremy learned, and it got bad enough that Jordi couldn’t even lift his hands up to carry on weaving.  
  
Jeremy helped him over to his room and maneuvered him awkwardly past the screen.  
  
“Woah,” he exclaimed without thinking, “you’ve got a lot of books for a blind guy.”  
  
Jordi, nestled on his bed of furs, smiled sadly, tiredly.  
  
“They are not mine… They were Gabry’s…” he trailed off.  
  
“Gabry’s?” Jeremy asked, but to no reply. Jordi had fallen asleep.  
  
Jeremy rolled him carefully onto his side - like he had done when he had to take care of Frank - and covered him up to stop him getting a chill.

——-

By the time the next night came around, Jeremy was starting to go stir-crazy. He had never stayed underground for so long and it was getting to him. He had no idea how Jordi managed it.  
  
Thankfully, Nicole seemed to notice his discomfort - he had practically chewed all of his fingernails off that day already - and she took him out hunting with her that evening. As it turned out, there was an entrance that only took two minutes to get them inside and outside, and Ian had taken him the long way in to mess with him.  
  
“It’s great having a fourth person around,” Nicole said conversationally as they walked, a pair of dead badgers slung over her shoulder. She, too, easily navigated the rocky landscape of the mountainside. Jeremy was sort of getting it, but every now and then he stepped on something that he was sure would hold, but didn’t. Nicole had grabbed his arm so many times to stop him from toppling over that it was starting to bruise.  
  
“Jordi’s good at hiding it, but I get the impression that he’s sort of, I don’t know…”  
  
“Lonely?” Jeremy supplied, squinting at the ground through his goggles.  
  
“Yeah,” Nicole sighed, “We may as well cook these things while there’s still time.”  
  
She showed him the right way of skinning a badger and he absorbed the lesson eagerly, making only a few mistakes on his one.  
  
Jeremy stared into the fire that Nicole brought to life, letting his thoughts run away from him. The conversation he had had with Jordi in his room the night before had been on his mind all day. Jordi really  _had_  had a lot of books; there were stacks and stacks of them piled up in a group of the corner of his room, and though the covers were caked in dust, Jeremy had been able to make out a few of the titles. So…  
  
Who’s Gabry?  
  
” _Gabry_?” Nicole repeated quietly. Jeremy’s head snapped up - he hadn’t realised he had been speaking aloud - and he saw that her expression was a bit pained and regretted even thinking about it.  
  
“Y-yeah… uh… Jordi has a lot of books in his—”  
  
“Jordi told you about Gabry?” Nicole cut him off. She didn’t seem angry, but her eyes were sharp.  
  
“No, he just… I dunno, he was half asleep by then,” Jeremy looked back into the fire, scratching the side of his neck, “He just said that the books were Gabry’s.”  
  
Nicole nodded and prodded the meat where it was cooking on the fire.  
  
“Look, I’m only telling you so you don’t ask Jordi and get him upset,” (Jeremy’s ears burned - he hadn’t thought he was being _nosy_  before she had said that) “but Gabry was sort of like his brother. They weren’t actually related or anything but Gabry had taken care of him for nearly all of his life. He, uh,” Nicole swallowed, “he had learned to speak and read English from a guy they met as teenagers. The three of them had been travelling together for years before we met them. Gabry used to read to Jordi to pass the time.”  
  
Jeremy frowned, thoughtful. “What happened to him?”  
  
“We don’t really know,” Nicole shook her head solemnly, “it had been Gabry’s turn to get meat, but morning dawned and he still wasn’t back. Liam - the guy who had taught Gabry and Jordi how to speak English - went to look for him, even though the sun was up.  
  
“Caine and Ian found them that night. Gabry had been attacked and bled to death. Liam was next to him and his skin was all burned and leathery, like… like he had just found Gabry there and lied down next to him to die in the sunlight.”  
  
Jeremy grimaced in shock.  
  
“That’s stupid!” he blasted, “what kind of idiot just runs out into the sun after a dead man?!”  
  
Nicole glared at him, “This is why I didn’t wait for you to ask Jordi about this.”  
  
Jeremy recoiled and looked down at his boots.  
  
“I just… I’d never let myself get close enough to someone for that to happen.” he murmured. Nicole sighed and gave him a one-armed hug.  
  
“You don’t choose who you fall in love with, kid.”  
  
Something struck him in that phrase, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. Mentally, he filed it away for later.  
  
“Do you think that Jordi would mind if I started to read to him?” Jeremy asked in a quiet, shy voice.  
  
Nicole ruffled his hair affectionately, “I think he would like that.”  
  
——-  
At first, Jordi hadn’t liked it at all.  
  
Jeremy had approached him nervously,  _Alice in Wonderland_  gripped in his hands. He had gotten to the end of the second paragraph before Jordi realised what he was doing.  
  
Jeremy didn’t need to speak Jordi’s language to know what “ _arrêtez_ ” meant, especially when he reached over to close the book, and over the days that followed, Jordi withdrew into himself.  
  
Nicole told Jeremy one morning that she hadn’t seen him the way he was since Caine had disappeared, and it quickly became yet another thought to etch itself into the forefront of Jeremy’s mind.  
  
That evening, Jordi woke from a nightmare. He had them frequently, and sometimes it was hard to help him calm down from the coughing that inevitably followed.  
  
Jeremy sat on the ground next to the screen to Jordi’s room, cheek resting on the cave wall, listening to him wheeze. There wasn’t really anything Jeremy could do; Jordi kept water next to himself when he slept for use in these situations, and he probably didn’t want Jeremy around right now.  
  
Yet, he didn’t go away.  
  
Jeremy sucked in a breath before speaking. “Jordi? You okay in there?”  
  
“Non….” came the croaked reply.  
  
“Can I come in?”  
  
Jordi didn’t answer. Jeremy exhaled and rested his cheek back against the wall, folded his arms around his knees.  
  
“You may,” Jordi finally acquiesced, and Jeremy perked up, gathering up the pile of treated animal skins he had brought. He moved the screen and slowly approached the bed. Jordi was ragged; he was paler than usual and the underneaths of his eyes looked bruised.  
  
“Um, if you could try sitting up for a second, I can prop you up a bit more,” Jeremy gestured with the armful of furs, even though Jordi couldn’t see him, “it’ll help with the coughing.”  
  
“I doubt anything would help with the coughing,” Jordi muttered, but did as he was asked. His body shook a little with the exertion, and Jeremy rushed to arrange the pelts in the right way so that Jordi didn’t completely exhaust himself. Jordi laid back down and even his face seemed to relax slightly.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Jeremy mumbled, eyes averted, “I thought you’d like being read to, I didn’t mean to make you feel sad…”  
  
Jordi exhaled and turned his head toward Jeremy.  
  
“You may read to me now if you would still like to,” he said quietly. Jeremy had the notion that maybe Jordi hadn’t approached him for the same reason Jeremy hadn’t; they both thought they had upset the other.  
  
Jeremy found a book to read -  _Winnie the Pooh_  - and as he opened it he pressed his nose into the fold, breathed in the smell of the paper and the non-harmful dust. The library probably would have smelled like this, before everything that happened. When he looked back up, Jordi was smiling, and Jeremy’s heart jumped at being caught.  
  
“It, uh… reminds me of when I was learning to read,” he explained gingerly, and Jordi nodded, still smiling.  
  
It was infectious, and as he opened up the first page to begin reading, Jeremy found that he was smiling too.  
  
” _In which a house is built at Pooh corner for Eeyore…_ ”  
  
-  
  
Jeremy, Nicole and Ian rotated which nights they hunted so that there were always two people out at a time. At first, Jeremy thought it was so that Jordi wouldn’t be left alone. Apparently, it was actually because none of them were comfortable with anyone being outside on their own since the morning that Caine hadn’t returned.  
  
When he was out, Nicole taught him to hunt the native animals and how to skin them. Ian taught him how to find a decent water source (he was a dowser, Jeremy discovered) when he got stuck for one. When he was in, he helped change the bathwater or he cleared up the scraps of food that had gone bad. After these tasks were finished, he sat with Jordi by the hot rocks and made his way through the extensive collection of books Gabry and Liam had collected.  
  
Jeremy got into the habit of reading to Jordi every dawn before he slept. It didn’t take much longer than a page or two to send him off, but it was very effective in suppressing the nightmares he suffered from, and did wonders for his health.  He still struggled with his cough, however, and some nights he woke up too exhausted to even get out of bed. On nights like these, Jeremy carefully carried some of the hot rocks into Jordi’s room and sat quietly with him as he dozed.  
  
He wasn’t sure what made him do it.  
  
“S’there something on your mind, Jeremy?” Nicole asked one morning. She had amazing energy reserves, and instead of going to bed after dinner, she had chosen to heat the water they bathed in instead.  
  
Jeremy just couldn’t sleep.  
  
He frowned in response to her question. He had been on the same page of  _The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark_  for however long they had been sat in there but the words weren’t processing.  
  
“I just…” he started, frown deepening. He closed the book, “You said that ‘you don’t choose who you fall in love with’, right?”  
  
“Right..?”  
  
Jeremy huffed, struggling over how to phrase himself. He chewed the inside of his cheek.  
  
“But … Gabry and Liam were  _guys_ , right? How could they be in love?”  
  
Nicole frowned and laughed, “What?”  
  
“Men only fall in love with women… don’t they?”  
  
Nicole looked at him oddly for a moment, and he became aware of the fact that he’d probably said something stupid.  
  
“Well, if they do, then nobody ever bothered to tell Gabry and Liam that; they were practically married,” Nicole joked, “I think they got a kick out of being as loud as they could to piss Ian off when he was around.”  
  
Jeremy’s face burned and he looked back down at his book. He felt embarrassed, but couldn’t be sure why. He kept speaking, even though he wasn’t really sure what he would say until he had already said it.  
  
“D-did it bother Jordi? That… that Gabry was with a man?”  
  
Nicole shook her head, stirring the pool of water with a cupped hand, “I don’t think so. I mean, Gabry was happy, and Jordi and Liam got along really well.”  
  
A chill ran down Jeremy’s neck.  
  
He swallowed.  
  
“I never seen two guys together before…  I didn’t…”  
  
“Don’t get all worried about it; you didn’t know and now you do,” Nicole summarised lightly, “test the water for me?”  
  
Jeremy stuck his hand in the pool and winced slightly, “Yeah. That’s hot enough.”  
  
-  
  
A deer.  
  
A fucking  _deer_.  
  
Jeremy threw himself silently to the ground, sharp pebbles digging into his stomach. He didn’t wear his jacket anymore, and his shirt had ridden up a little in the jump, but he couldn’t risk making any more noise.  
  
It was standing not far away, pushing through the scrubby bushes and grasses that grew there with its nose. It didn’t have horns, which was good; Jeremy would have an easier time with it.  
  
He didn’t know how long he waited, but the right moment didn’t arise. Suddenly, its ears perked up and it stood alert, looking off into the distance. It took off, bounding away, and Jeremy raced after it, propelled by adrenaline. It slowed, and Jeremy dove down again, scraping his forearms this time. He was hidden by some yellow grasses and it didn’t seem to have noticed him, somehow, as it went back to sniffing around for its own dinner.  
  
Jeremy felt his muscles tense and coil and he sprang after it, wrapped his arms around its neck and wrestled it down into the snow that lingered this high up the mountainside, even though winter had passed week ago. It was strong, and it was flicking its legs around and making a strangled braying noise and was only silenced when Jeremy pulled its head back hard enough to snap the neck.  
  
Both it and Jeremy fell limp, though Jeremy was still alive. He panted and pushed the thing off of him, started to skin it right there on the spot. It was heavy and there was no way he could have carried it back up to the copse. Besides that, the sun was beginning to rise, and he needed to find Ian so that they wouldn’t go looking for him.  
  
He stuffed as much meat as he could into his backpack and stood up, looking around.  
  
“Ffffffff _uck_ ” he growled to himself. He didn’t recognise any of the surrounding landscape. Worse than that, the sky was getting lighter every second.  
  
Jeremy started off in the direction he thought he had come from as fast as he could, the meat in his bag weighing him down.  
  
“Shit…  _fuck_ ,” he hissed under his breath. The sun was starting to flirt with the horizon and Jeremy yanked his goggles down and crouched as he walked, keeping himself in the shadows. He dropped down into a deep trench and pain sprang up his leg but he ignored it, crawling as deep into the crevice as he dared before stopping.  
  
He gasped for breath, shaking, hair sticking to his neck with sweat. He pressed his palm to his chest and his heart pounded fiercely against it and he fought hard to keep himself from dissolving entirely into a fit of panic, reminding himself that he was, for the time being, safe again.  
  
The sun poked into the opposite corner of the trench and Jeremy stayed perfectly still, watching it as if it was hunting him. Frantically, he turned and dug away at the wall of earth, his skin and nails tearing on some of the sharp stones that were buried down with him. He crawled into the overhang with just enough time to spare and pulled his bag in after him. His ankle throbbed with pain and he groaned and rubbed it with his hands, smearing blood and dirt across the previously clean skin.  
  
He couldn’t relax where he was, and he waited hours, watching the sun try reach out to him with its claws and drag him back out into the open, burn him to a crisp. He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself and clamped his eyes shut.  
  
“Please,” he whispered to himself, “please, don’t let me die here,”  
  
-  
  
The day passed agonisingly slowly. Jeremy managed to nap once or twice out of pure exhaustion, but he felt sick with relief when the shadows finally started to edge away from him.  
  
The skin around his ankle had blossomed a deep purple and he couldn’t even wrap it from the pain it caused him. When the sun had descended fully, he crawled out of the hole in the side of the trench and slung his bag back over his shoulders. With much difficulty, he dragged himself up the wall of the trench, putting as little weight on his injury as possible. He didn’t know how much time had passed before he managed to crest the top edge, after which he lay limp and panting, muscles quivering and head swimming from lack of food and sleep.  
  
Jeremy stood shakily and cast his bleary eyes around. He didn’t recognise any landmarks on the rocky, desolate landscape. He whimpered wordlessly, utterly spent, and sank back down to his knees, his head in his hands. His chest felt constricted and his eyes were hot and stinging and there was something thick in his throat that he couldn’t swallow against.  
  
He took a deep, shuddering breath and scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. Jeremy rose again and started in the direction he was facing, progressing slowly due to his limp. Light - orange, flickering light - flared a few hundred metres into the darkness away from him and his heart leapt. He staggered toward it like a man possessed, not caring about the injury or the lack of sleep and food, but only about putting one foot in front of the other.  
  
The closer he got, however… the more he felt like something wasn’t right.  
  
-  
  
Jeremy was a young boy, and he lived with his Mummy on the top of a small hill.  
  
Jeremy was skinny and had pale hair and freckles, and eyes that were blue like daylight turned the sky.  
  
In fact, he was the same as every child that had ever been, except for one thing.  
  
Jeremy was afraid of the dark.  
  
“You  _can’t_  be afraid of the dark,” said his Mummy. “Little boys are  _never_  afraid of the dark.”  
  
“This one is,” Jeremy said.  
  
“But people come out at night,” she said.  
  
 _Jeremy!_  
  
Jeremy looked down at his toes. “I don’t want to be a night person,” he mumbled. “I want to be a day person.”  
  
“I think you had better go down into the world and find out a lot more about the dark before you make your mind up about it.”  
  
 _Jeremy!!_  
  
“Now?” said Jeremy.  
  
“Now,” said his mother. So Jeremy shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and rolled down the hill.  
  
-  
  
“Jeremy, wake up!  _Jeremy!_ ”  
  
Jeremy felt, rather than made, his eyes open. His body was cold, and his muscles ached. His leg was numb and there was a sharp throbbing pain in the top of his forehead.  
  
“Can you hear me?”  
  
It was weird to hear Ian worried…  
  
“Yeah,” he croaked, before coughing violently. He groaned and let his head fall back into the dirt, “why do I feel like I got beaten up?”  
  
“Probably because you got beaten up,” Ian sighed, “Does anything feel broken? Can you sit up?”  
  
Jeremy tried and, though pain flared in places he didn’t know could hurt so much, he managed to push himself into a sitting position. Ian carefully pulled Jeremy up onto his back and hooked his arms under Jeremy’s legs. Jeremy steadied himself by holding Ian’s shoulders and, when they got moving, rested his head on them too.  
  
“Don’t fall asleep, kid,” Ian warned, “what are you even doing this far away?”  
  
“Found a deer,” Jeremy mumbled, “couldn’t let it get away so I chased it.”  
  
“Was it worth getting lost for a day and then getting the shit kicked out of you?” Ian griped, and Jeremy’s expression soured.  
  
“How did you find me?” Jeremy asked eventually, the rocking motion of Ian’s gait making him sleepy.  
  
“I’m a dowser,” he replied simply, as if it wasn’t a big deal, “didn’t you ever wonder how Nicole and I knew where you were when you were hiding and waiting for us in the copse?”  
  
“Never really thought about it… I guess I just thought I made a noise or stank like the dead.”  
  
Ian snorted.  
  
“It was that, too.”  
  
———  
The sun was starting to rise again by the time they returned.  
  
Jordi was already asleep, and Nicole looked like she couldn’t decide whether or not to hug Jeremy because he was alive or yell at him because he was such a reckless idiot.  
  
In the end, she did neither, and Jeremy didn’t apologise for making her worry.  
  
He limped into the bathing room and slumped down on the edge of the pool. Gingerly and with a relieved sigh, he eased the boot and sock off of his injured ankle. It had swollen up, and the bruise looked almost violent.  
  
Jeremy dreaded to think of what the rest of him looked like.  
  
He rolled his trouser leg up past the knee and eased his foot into the pool, clenching his teeth against the sharp needles of pain on his skin. This was necessary, he knew, and as such he decided to just get on with it and submerge his leg up to the mid-calf. After a moment or two, the pain receded and became soothing and he sighed pleasantly.  
  
“You’re back,” a quiet voice echoed through the tiny cove.  
  
Jeremy turned his head and saw Jordi in the entryway, tired but self-supporting, wringing his hands.  
  
“Yep,” Jeremy chirped, feeling hot under the collar all of a sudden, “couldn’t keep myself away.”  
  
Jordi came and sat by him and Jeremy almost feared he’d fall into the pool, but somehow the blind man moved easier in the smaller space. Jordi sat close enough that their arms touched, but this didn’t make Jeremy uncomfortable like he would have expected it to.  
  
“Where ‘ave you been?” Jordi asked conversationally, as if he was asking which book Jeremy was going to read next.  
  
“I uh… I saw a deer,” Jeremy explained, feeling increasingly stupid, “and, you know, it was a  _deer_ , I couldn’t just, like… let it _go_. It woulda fed us for  _days_.  
  
“I caught it and everything,” he continued, “But I’d gotten so far away by that point I couldn’t remember my way back, and then the  _sun_  came up and I fell down some kind of ditch and spent the whole day in a hole about as big as one of your baskets,” at the memory, his stomach clenched and the hairs on his arms stood upright.  
  
“What is a deer like?” Jordi asked, and it was such a difficult concept for Jeremy to understand that he was almost rendered speechless.  
  
He thought over it for a moment. “Um…They’re sort of tall foxes, I guess, except not really. Some of ‘em have horns bigger than my legs, but this one didn’t. I dunno, I’m not really good at explaining things like that…” he trailed off, noticing that Jordi didn’t comprehend still. “Uh… I’m sorry, I don’t know how to say it in a way you’d understand, I guess”  
  
“I wasn’t born blind,” Jordi murmured, “but you are right; you could tell me what the sky looked like and I wouldn’t be able to picture it. I don’t even know what you, Nicole or Ian look like.”  
  
Jeremy’s eyes fell. He might not know what it was like to speak two languages or weave with your hands, but at least he could  _see_.  
  
Suddenly, an idea popped into his head.  
  
“When you’re weaving, you sort of like…” Jeremy waved his hands around, gesturing with them out of habit, “you sort of feel the entire surface of things to see if it’s going right, don’t you?”  
  
“Oui,” Jordi nodded. He did that sometimes; spoke his first language where the context would help teach Jeremy what it meant. Jeremy sort of liked it.  
  
“Well, you could probably learn to do that with other things, don’tcha think?” Jeremy’s voice became excited, “I could help! I could carve shapes out of wood for you!”  
  
Jordi smiled in response before his expression became solemn again. “Ian mentioned that you got attacked,” he said.  
  
“Yeah,” Jeremy sighed, lifting his leg out of the water to check on it, “I won’t be walking for a few days, I guess. I got in a few punches of my own, I think; my knuckles are all scraped up again…”  
  
Jordi seemed to hesitate for a moment, before he held his hand out, palm upwards. “May I?”  
  
Jeremy eyed him, a little bit confused, but put his hand into Jordi’s anyway. On its own, even that action felt odd to him; the last person he had touched in a non-necessary way had been his mother, and he didn’t even know how long ago that had been. Jordi’s hands were, understandably, larger than Jeremy’s mother’s had been, and the skin on his fingers was hard where the weaving had callused them.  
  
Slowly, and with a slight itch, Jeremy watched as the skin over his knuckles repaired itself. There wasn’t any light, and Jordi was not muttering, but it was healing magic all the same.  
  
“You  _are_  a mutant,” he breathed, and Jordi stopped abruptly.  
  
“Pardon?”  
  
“Uh,” Jeremy’s face flushed, “I didn’t mean it like, like  _badly_  or nothing, I just… when I first saw you I thought you were a mutant because you had a big nose, but then you didn’t do anything special and so I guess I decided you weren’t.”  
  
Jordi was silent for a moment, and Jeremy wondered if he had offended him.  
  
“Your healing thing is really cool, though!” Jeremy insisted, trying to cheer Jordi up.  
  
Jordi just shrugged, “I can’t do much more than cuts and bruises… If I could ‘eal my lungs then I would ‘ave done.”  
  
The grin fell off of Jeremy’s face so fast that he thought he heard it drop into the pool.  
  
“…Do you think it’s bad?” Jeremy asked, his voice weak and maybe a bit afraid. Jordi nodded in reply.  
  
“I think it probably would be worse if I could not heal some things, but…” he shrugged, “either way, I don’t think I’ll be fighting it for much longer.”  
  
Jeremy felt a wave of vertigo and he gripped Jordi’s hand tighter to steady himself. He searched Jordi’s face, needing eye contact all of a sudden, like it was an anchor, like what Jordi had just said was an exaggeration and he needed to see into Jordi’s eyes to see the joke. Jeremy felt a reciprocating pressure on his hand and he looked down at where they were still joined, realising in a rush that if Jordi saw things with his hands then this  _was_  eye contact to him. He squeezed harder and pressed his forehead into Jordi’s shoulder.  
  
“My apologies…” Jordi murmured, “I didn’t mean to upset you.”  
  
Jeremy tried to tell him he was fine, but his voice caught in his throat and he couldn’t make a sound.  
  
-  
  
After that, Jeremy started to initiate more physical contact with Jordi, and he started to use hand contact as he would otherwise use eye contact.  
  
He was given orders of bed rest while his ankle (sprained, Ian had pronounced) healed up, as medicine was hard to come by and they were saving their painkillers for more desperate situations. They didn’t seem to know about Jordi’s ability, or they didn’t want to ask it of him. Though the idea of being confined to a bed for days made him feel extremely uncomfortable, he found that Jordi’s company made the time fly past. Or, maybe the blind healer was just helping the process along.  
  
Jeremy didn’t mind either way, and soon found that he enjoyed touching Jordi’s hand or arm or wrist, liked to lie alongside him while he read and Jordi listened. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but he thought that Jordi seemed happier too, and Jeremy supposed it was because the light contact was helping alleviate his loneliness. This made Jeremy feel happy too, noticeably so, and while this should have bothered him more than it did, he found that he was glad to have a friend like Jordi.  
  
Jeremy wasn’t sure how much time passed, but it was long enough for the snow to finish melting outside and for the rainy period to start.   
  
It was the first dry night in a few days, and Nicole and Ian had been gone for a couple of hours.  
  
Jeremy was half-sitting, half-lying on the furs that made up Jordi’s bed. Jordi, set on the floor beside him, was fiddling with several small pieces of wood, carved into various simple shapes. He had been practising hard, and was right nine times out of ten when it came to identifying things by feel now, but he wanted to get perfect at it before he moved on.  
  
“Jeremy?”  
  
“Mmm?” Jeremy absent-mindedly grunted.  
  
“I… I want to start trying faces now,” Jordi said hesitantly. It could have been the weird light but Jeremy swore he saw his cheeks go pink, “it bothers me that I don’t know what you or Nicole and Ian look like. Even if my mind’s picture isn’t perfect, I just.. need to know.”  
  
“Well, uh…” Jeremy felt his face flush scarlet in response and he swallowed to control his voice, “s-sure.”  
  
Jordi nodded, and Jeremy took his hand.  Jeremy swallowed again and brought the hand to his face, dropping his own upon contact, letting Jordi dictate the rest.  
  
“You’re warm,” he commented, and Jeremy laughed a little bit.  
  
“Yeah,”  
  
Jeremy felt exhilarated all of a sudden, like he was just about to jump down a steep decline. His breathing, though still silent, became shallower and his heartbeat was going doubletime and suddenly he had a moment of complete clarity and understanding and he breathed out as the realisation took him.  
  
Slowly, so that Jordi would be prepared, he leaned forward, pausing after a moment, feeling his confidence wobble. What was he doing? What if Jordi thought he was a freak?  _What if—_  
  
Jordi, thankfully,  _mercifully,_  seemed to have no trouble picking up for him, and he used the hand curled around Jeremy’s jaw to bring them fully together.  
  
They kissed slowly, tenderly, and the clarity with which Jeremy suddenly understood his feelings extended out and explained the other things that bothered him. This was why he had trusted Nicole and Ian so easily, this was why he had wandered the desert for years, this was why his home was destroyed. Everything,  _everything_  he had ever done had been pushing him toward this moment.  
  
Jeremy’s hand flew up and fisted in the front of Jordi’s shirt and a soft, muffled noise was expelled from one of them. Just for a moment, the kiss was fierce and hungry and nothing could have been more of a contrast to the kiss Jeremy had had at the library all that time ago, but soon -  _too_  soon - Jordi yanked himself away. He coughed violently, repeatedly, and Jeremy found himself rooted to the spot, each one shocking him like a cold, jarring slap to the face.  
  
What was he  _doing_?  
  
“I can’t do this,” Jeremy mumbled. There was a short silence - a shocked one - before he was spurred into action. Jeremy moved away jerkily, tripping over his own feet, and scrambled out of Jordi’s room. He heard Jordi calling after him but it only proved to heighten his frenzy and suddenly he was in his own room, shoving his meagre possessions into the worn rucksack he had arrived with. The room tilted for a moment and he stopped and put his head in his hands, became conscious of his erratic breathing.  
  
Jordi was there as Jeremy turned to go outside, an unreadable expression on his face.  
  
“You’re leaving.” Jordi acknowledged. He was so calm and collected that Jeremy felt his panic rear up again as if they were fully parallel to each other. Jeremy thought he felt his chest hurt.  
  
“I’m sorry,  _I’m sorry_ ,” Jeremy babbled, and he reached out with shaking hands to hold Jordi by the upper arms, “I have to go, there’s something I…” he trailed off for a moment, opening his mouth but finding himself unable to make sounds, “I-i just… I have to go. I’m  _sorry_ , I-” he let go abruptly and fished around in his bag. He pulled out  _The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark_ and pressed it into Jordi’s hand, “have this, I know you’ll take care of it.”  
  
Before Jordi could even form a reply, Jeremy had gone.  
  
-  
  
-  
  
 _Epilogue_  
  
  
In the moonlight, Jeremy almost didn’t see the grave.  
  
He hadn’t even realised where he was before he saw it.  
  
Too much time had passed.  
  
  
  
Both of his arms were coated with black grease lines.  
  
A book sat in the dirt, and he reached down to brush the dust off of the cover. It was worn, and the pages were falling out and too much time had passed, but Jeremy still knew all the words.  
  
Realisation crashed over him and all of the air whooshed out of his lungs.  
  
That night, he sat over Jordi’s grave, and cried.


End file.
